Escaped Atlantic Salmon & WA

[Jim]

Someone asked about Atlantic Salmon in Puget Sound recently. Here you go:

 

http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20030810/frontpage/72453.shtml

[offwidthclimber]

that fucking sucks.

 

if you want to raise atlantic salmon, move to the east coast, you dirty money-grubbing fuckers.

 

[EWolfe]

This type of shit really pisses me off

Here's some good reasons why to not fuck with the natural order of things (from the article):

 

State biologists say there's a chance that the Atlantic salmon could survive in the river, migrate down the Chehalis River to the ocean, get big and return to reproduce -- and eventually push out native coho salmon and cutthroat trout by introducing diseases, pushing them off prime spawning areas and eating their food -- and even their young.

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim]

It is a drag. Private profit off the public resource - water - and guess who has to deal with the mess.

 

Up in BC they have verified Atlantic Salmon in native salmon runs.

[Fence_Sitter]

told ya so!

[Ducknut]

They shouldn't farm them in Maine either. They escape and hybridize with the native Atlantics. The net pens they raise them in contribute huge loads of waste to the water, interfere with other uses such as lobstering and are ugly to boot. A bunch of environmental organizations are urging folks to not eat farmed atlantics. Their flesh doesn't turn that nice orange color when they eat their Purina fish-chow, so they artificially dye them. Yumyum.

[bunglehead]

FUCK farm raised Salmon. We're well on our way to destroying the ecosystem. well, at least it will be interesting for Anthropologists and Geologists in the future to study the only human caused great extinction.

 

[lummox]

yea. i know its several months before the squid jigging gets good. early as it is heres a way to bread squid rings before frying: use crushed up graham crackers. the sugar will turn the crust a nice brown quickly so the squid wont get cooked to a rubbery state. just dont tell anyone theyr eating graham crackers (cuase it sounds wierd and shit).

youre welcome you fucking epicures.

[Fence_Sitter]

bunglehead said:

FUCK farm raised Salmon. We're well on our way to destroying the ecosystem. well, at least it will be interesting for Anthropologists and Geologists in the future to study the only human caused great extinction.

 

dare ya to guess what percentage of salmon are farmed...even here... take a guess and double it...

[bunglehead]

A LOT. I don't buy farm raised salmon. Or Shrimp.

But since you asked for a guess, and I'm assuming you know the asnwer, I'm guessing around 50%? I know at the local genero-mart, all of it is. There is a store in town here that sells wild Salmon, and the color difference between it and the farm shite is very easy to spot.

[terrible_ted]

lummox said:

yea. i know its several months before the squid jigging gets good. early as it is heres a way to bread squid rings before frying: use crushed up graham crackers. the sugar will turn the crust a nice brown quickly so the squid wont get cooked to a rubbery state. just dont tell anyone theyr eating graham crackers (cuase it sounds wierd and shit).

youre welcome you fucking epicures.

 

Funny, I heard that on NPR just this last week.

[Crackbolter]

This is nothing new to the Pacific Northwest. Back when the Bonneville Dam was first built, the first return of salmon had no way of getting up above the dam. They also had no way of knowing what to do with them or where to put them. At first they would put the fish in holding water and truck them up to whatever river they thought deemed important. Eventually they realized that the only way to sustain populations of fish is to have hatcheries at every headwater. We now are currently raising 90 percent of the salmon and steelhead in the state of Washington by hatcheries. Most wild stocks have diminished or bred with hatchery escapees only to diminish the populations even more so. That on top of sport fishermen attmepting to beat the state record by removing the strongest and largest strains of salmon and steelhead leaves us with a big problem. Atlantic salmon were the first fish to be introduced into the PNW.They thought they could just bring their gamefish to the NW and they would have sustainable populations. The nice thing about Atlantic Salmon is that they will eventually die off and quit reproducing. They can't compete with the salmon and steelhead although they do propose a temporary threat to wild populations. I think we have more to worry about than one small farm escapement. Especially when you think about the Elwha supplying 500,000 salmon to the ocean before the dams and now we are down to about 100,000 on a good season. By removing the dam we can have an addition of 200,000 more fish within the fourth year by hatchery returns.

 

The real objective is to remove all dams and reform all Hatcheries to regain a natural sustaining population once again. This can only happen with the sacrifice of hydroelectric power and irrigation canals or any method that does not effect the rearing or spawning grounds of salmon and steelhead.

[terrible_ted]

Read about the history of Great Lakes aquaculture. A few high points:

 

Fish out all the grayling and lake trout

then pollute the hell out of the lakes

plant salmon/steelhead

boom salmon fishery creates charter business

salmon clean out the candlefish

plant baitfish to support salmonids

lamprey wipes out the salmonids

planted baitfish beach themselves in massive numbers, creating noxious lake shore for weeks every summer

rotenone the creeks to kill the lamprey spawn, while inadvertantly killing off the planted trout/char in the same streams...

uh, oh - here come zebra mussels...

 

Now they wonder why it's so difficult to re-introduce grayling and lake trout...

 

-t

[Fence_Sitter]

bunglehead said:

A LOT. I don't buy farm raised salmon. Or Shrimp.

But since you asked for a guess, and I'm assuming you know the asnwer, I'm guessing around 50%? I know at the local genero-mart, all of it is. There is a store in town here that sells wild Salmon, and the color difference between it and the farm shite is very easy to spot.

 

more... and they dye the flesh... can you still tell the difference? i have seen teh color of un-dyed meat and it is freaking grey! disgusting... the reason for the color differnce is that natural salmon get somekinda plankton pigment or something when they eat shrimp... obviously when you feed them ground up cow they dotn get this...

[Fence_Sitter]

Crackbolter said:

This is nothing new to the Pacific Northwest. Back when the Bonneville Dam was first built, the first return of salmon had no way of getting up above the dam. They also had no way of knowing what to do with them or where to put them. At first they would put the fish in holding water and truck them up to whatever river they thought deemed important. Eventually they realized that the only way to sustain populations of fish is to have hatcheries at every headwater. We now are currently raising 90 percent of the salmon and steelhead in the state of Washington by hatcheries. Most wild stocks have diminished or bred with hatchery escapees only to diminish the populations even more so. That on top of sport fishermen attmepting to beat the state record by removing the strongest and largest strains of salmon and steelhead leaves us with a big problem. Atlantic salmon were the first fish to be introduced into the PNW.They thought they could just bring their gamefish to the NW and they would have sustainable populations. The nice thing about Atlantic Salmon is that they will eventually die off and quit reproducing. They can't compete with the salmon and steelhead although they do propose a temporary threat to wild populations. I think we have more to worry about than one small farm escapement. Especially when you think about the Elwha supplying 500,000 salmon to the ocean before the dams and now we are down to about 100,000 on a good season. By removing the dam we can have an addition of 200,000 more fish within the fourth year by hatchery returns.

 

The real objective is to remove all dams and reform all Hatcheries to regain a natural sustaining population once again. This can only happen with the sacrifice of hydroelectric power and irrigation canals or any method that does not effect the rearing or spawning grounds of salmon and steelhead.

 

totally agree with you, but i think both are dangerous to the ecology of the area... damn need to go, but i am not so shure that thsoe in charge give a shit... mabe its time for some subterfuge action!!!!

 

disclaimer: i am just joking... kinda

[lummox]

terrible_ted said:

lummox said:

yea. i know its several months before the squid jigging gets good. early as it is heres a way to bread squid rings before frying: use crushed up graham crackers. the sugar will turn the crust a nice brown quickly so the squid wont get cooked to a rubbery state. just dont tell anyone theyr eating graham crackers (cuase it sounds wierd and shit).

youre welcome you fucking epicures.

 

Funny, I heard that on NPR just this last week.

i heard that shit too. but its an old okie recipe for breaded catfish. i just happen to like squid a lot more.

[Scott_J]

Jim said:

Someone asked about Atlantic Salmon in Puget Sound recently. Here you go:

 

http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20030810/frontpage/72453.shtml

 

I HATE FARMED RAISED SALMON, CATFISH, ETC., ETC.

I AM PISSED ABOUT THIS AND HERE IS WHY.

Salmon are raised on a diet of oily brown fishmeal pellets made form inexpensive fish products: anchovetas, sardines, mackeral etc. Raised a pound of salmon takes 4 pounds of shit fish. So if you look at BC farmed fish they waste about 100 thousand TONS of edible protien to get 25 thousand pounds of salmon.

Wild salmon gets its color from their food source, particulary krill, a tiny shrimp like crustacean.(white king starts off on crab as fingerlings so that is why you cn order white king instead of pink king salmon)BUT NOT SO WITH FARMED FISH, hell no, they add dye to their fish meal other wise the product would look like their food pellets...grayish shite to brownish white.

I am controling myself so I don't write too much. Here is another little by product...excess amounts of fish excrement. One large BC fish farm can product enough excrement to equal a city of 9,000 to 11,000 people. This is not spread out over large areas like a wild biomass does but its concentrated in a small area polluting crab, clam, soft corals, etc.

The reason fish farms like the Atlantic salmon is that they can be raised in close quarters unlike our west coast native species salmon. hell, even pinks(fucking junk salmon of the salmon species)are better for you than these fuckers.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkk fucckkkckckkkckckkk. I hate it when $$$$$$$$$$ fucks up the stuff I like to do.

Here are some web sites to go to if you want more information or want to help[.

www.ecotrust.org

www.asf.ca

wwwgefoodakert.org

www.humboldt.net/~salmon

www.mattole.org

 

You can help by asking when you go out to eat if its wild or farm raised. Don't order if its farm raised. In fact raise a rukus...I do much to my wife's consternation. When at the local grocery store or Costco as if they have wild salmon...if not ask why? Tell them you will not eat farm raised and you would like to see them carry wild stock salmon.

OK, Ok I am off my box. Fuck this pisses me off. I love fishing, taking enough for personal use and then going fishing some more for fun. There is no greater thrill that getting a big salmon on a fly rod, casting rod or spinning rod. I've even commercial fished in Alaska and there is not greater thrill than seeing your corks disappear because you hit the fucking salmon so hard on that set!!!! Then the work starts...picking and grinning till your back aches. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[RobBob]

I was on the road yesterday, and missed Jim's "salmon troll."

 

Everybody needs to read past the hardline doctrine on this issue to understand it. I'm not a salmon farmer, but my work is close to both aquaculture and wild-catch fisheries. The majority of farmed salmon eaten in the US is in fact Atlantic salmon raised in the Pacific----off the coast of Chile. And this issue is greatly politicized due to the wild fishermen's belief that farmed salmon hurts their market rather than helps it. It is a trade war, complete with an anti-dumping suit that was filed against Chilean producers, that backfired when the Chileans had to stop advertising and instead spent their ad money on legal defense (in the end they won).

 

There is a great article (actually 2) in the latest Economist just out. It does a good job of providing a balanced view of aquaculture, and notes that while the environmental history of particularly shrimp farming is checkered, the fact is that production improvements are being made with comparatively rapid speed. Well-managed aquaculture produces great products, and needs to be a key part of controlling world over-fishing, which is much harder to control from a legal perspective.

 

Don't just blindly take sides on this issue. I love fishing and seafood as much as anyone I know. I feed my wife and kids salmon once a week. Because I know which to buy when, I buy both wild and farmed. Both are great for them, full of Omega-3s. Salmon...mmmmmmmmmmm!

[Jim]

Oh I don't think anyone here is saying aquaculture is inherently bad, if properly managed - but escaped exotics are not good. And the private fish farmers causing the problem don't have to deal with the effects - the public will pick up the tab.

[Jim]

Hmm. After some more reading I changed my mine. Farmed salmon sucks for a number of reasons. I never buy it anyway.

 

Very good summary of the farming issue including an article from the liberal Wall Steet Journal:

 

http://www.sectionz.info/issue_1/Facts_Footnotes.html

 

[RobBob]

And the private fish farmers causing the problem don't have to deal with the effects - the public will pick up the tab.

 

Hmmm...the communist attitude comes through. In fact you are wrong---as far as I know there is not a salmon farm in the world that is not permitted and regulated. The ones off the coast of Maine have been regulated, fined, and forced to discontinue.

 

And your link is not the WSJ, it is a page slamming salmon farming. If you are talking about the WSJ quote on flavor profiles, again, it depends on what you get from whom and what time of year it is. Same goes with wild.

 

Jim, if it were up to you, farming on land or water would not exist. You would let everyone starve, so that you could enjoy the World Park.

[Dru]

 

goddamn straight edgers!

[RobBob]

If you care about trace amounts of drugs, then I would stay away from just about any animal raised in China or SE Asia, whether from land or sea. Now that testing is so sensitive at low levels, the EU and our government are finding trace amounts of banned drugs like Chloramphenicol all the time. That's because of a bad combination of mom & pop uneducated farming procedures and 'mystery mixes' of drugs available in their markets.

[Jim]

Hmmm...the communist attitude comes through. In fact you are wrong---

 

And your link is not the WSJ, it is a page slamming salmon farming. If you are talking about the WSJ quote on flavor profiles, again, it depends on what you get from whom and what time of year it is. Same goes with wild.

 

Jim, if it were up to you, farming on land or water would not exist. You would let everyone starve, so that you could enjoy the World Park.

 

Ok, I'll do this dance again. I post a few facts - you revert to name calling and mouth foaming with out addressing any issues brought up in the link. And I think my quote above says "properly managed". Which many times they are not.

 

Canada is taking a harder line these days because they're worried about sea lice infections of native runs and extensive waste products laying on the seafloor under pens. Sure there's an economic issue with the farmers vs the fishers, but there's some large ecological issues also. Ya gotta relax a bit Bob, maybe try climbing some time.

 

 

[RobBob]

Er, read my first post again, Jim. All I said was this was an issue to get totally informed about, because there is a lot of politics behind it. You took that and worked your way to "I've changed my mind, I'm against it."

 

Hell, I could go through that page you linked, and point out how the meanings have been tweaked in a lot of those quotes cited. Why bother? I'm not Goat, and I'm not a salmon farmer.

 

You're the guy who gets all worked up, not me, bud. And you're the guy who makes personal cracks about people's climbing when they disagree with you, just like you did the first time we disagreed .... and like you just did again.